C M G Buttery

An article by Bridget M. Kuehn in this week’s JAMA [JAMA. 2005;294:3072-3073] reports on the rise in syphilis among men and suggests it may be related to chaning lifestyle. I doubt this is ‘news’ to anyone in public health. She also reports on the disparity between black and white reported GC incidence. I wonder whether [...]

News from the State of Oklahoma and Emery U. that “The results of a two-year study involving the Department of Human Services (7,500 employees) of the State of Oklahoma conclude the answer is “yes”. A lifestyle management program using step-by-step attainable goals was shown to successfully translate good intentions to live a healthier lifestyle into [...]

An interesting editorial from today’s BMJ questions the value of choice in medical care. Multiple choices may not be the equivalent of better, for instance; “In a recent bestselling business book, psychologist Barry Schwartz argues that the amount of choice on offer in life exceeds our ability to effectively exercise that choice, or even to [...]

From the University of Central Florida comes this facsinating research that “Enough anthrax vaccine to inoculate everyone in the United States could be grown inexpensively and safely with only one acre of tobacco plants, a University of Central Florida molecular biologist has found. Mice immunized with a vaccine produced in UCF professor Henry Daniell’s laboratory [...]

Released on December 6th by IOM and, I believe, required reading by all of us interested in the public’s health is the report on Food Marketing to Children.

An Editorial in the BMJ this week states that “Russia is one of the few developed countries where life expectancy has fallen in recent years. Russia’s total life expectancy of 66 years lags behind that of Japan by 16 years, the European Union by 14 years, and the United States by 12 years. High mortality [...]

From Yale School of Medicine: This story; the rates of chronic disability in older Americans has been substantially overestimated by about forty percent, researchers at Yale School of Medicine report in the December 12 Archives of Internal Medicine. “Our projections yielded about two million fewer chronically disabled older Americans in 1999, relative to the published [...]

From UT Southwestern: DALLAS – Dec. 12, 2005 – Our promises to eat less during the holidays seem to disappear when we’re faced with parties and family gatherings laden with high-calorie food and drinks. Year’s end can also bring out the worst in our eating habits, but a UT Southwestern Medical Center dietitian says breaking [...]

This study from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Steven H. Woolf, M.D., professor and director of research in VCU’s Department of Family Medicine and a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine concludes: ““For every dollar Congress gives the National Institutes of Health to develop blockbuster treatments, it spends only one penny to ensure [...]

A news release from the University of Florida raises some interesting questions about whether fructose may initiate or enhance obesity. This preliminary communication is well worth reading by all of us trying to find an answer. The link includes a short video from UF.